The New Development of Digital Libraries in China
Wei Liu
wliu@libnet.sh.cn
Shanghai Library
Shanghai 200031, China

Abstract

as practical application projects aim to build up
digital collections or provide digital library services

National level digital library infrastructure has awhich are involved with librarians and content

high priority to Chinese policy makers, just as theowners.

same important as the internet communication

China is a large country with a great imbalance insystem to the national information infrastructure.

the distribution of resource and population. Its GDP

According to the literature and the statistics from

(Gross Domestic Product) per capita is less thanperiodical database, the number of papers on digital

1000 USD i in 2002. But the information

library presents exponential growth in recent years.

infrastructure of China has achieved greatly in

It reflects that the integration and services of digital

recent years. According to the biannual survey bycollections have become the main issues in most of

CNNIC ii , there are 371600 websites with 157

Chinese large libraries, including public, academic

million web pages, 83 thousand online databases

and special libraries. This paper reviews andand 2878GB information within the cn domain byhighlights all the main efforts on the research andthe end of 2002. There are more than half of the 59

construction of digital libraries in China, introduces

million internet users lives in the capital and athe evolution of the developing policy of digitaldozen coastal cities, which is corresponding withresources, the achievements about the digitalthe distribution of universities and scientificservices,

library

research institutions, as well as the industries whichdevelopment in China, as well as the challenges on

are located around the coastal regions. This reflects

technology and policy aspects at the national level.

varying levels of librarianship and information

Keyword: digital libraries, china, metadata

literacy in China. The research and development ofapplication, projects

digital libraries is usually based in Beijing - the

and

the

trendsofdigitalcapital city - and other big cities that are located in

Introduction

the coastal areas.
The majority of funding for digital library projects

Like in the United States and Europe, while thecomes from the central government, mostly fromresearch and construction of digital libraries are

the national foundations for science and technology

prioritized as most important component in the

R&D (under the name of “863” and “973”

national information infrastructure, the term “digital

High-tech Development Program) and the funds

library” in China has no unified understanding or

earmarked for construction of national information

definition. It varies with different situations andinfrastructure. National Social Science Foundation

circumstances. In general, digital libraries haveis also a national funding source. A small part ispresented themselves as two major aspects infrom the provincial government, institutions andChinese publications, one as a research area

affiliated libraries. One new development is thatinvolved with computer specialists and content
serviceproviders

who

focus

on

digitaltechnology

library

research

institutes

have

been

established by some big universities, large public

improvement on digitizing, organizing, distributing,libraries and corporations iii to deal with thepreserving, retrieving and searching, while the otherincreasingly1

commonrequirements

for

the

integration of digital resources and the digitization(formerly the State Education Commission ofof traditional materials.

China), and the science and technology research
institutes, which are led by the Ministry of Science

Brief History

and Technology (formerly the State Science andTechnology Commission of China), and the Chinese

Chinese libraries have been paying close attention

Academy of Science. Chinese Vice Premier Li

to the application of new information technology

Lanqing commented that “Digital library will be theand the development of digital libraries in western

trend of libraries in the future” as he visitedcountries since the beginning of last nineties. Many

National Library of China in October 1998. After

Chinese librarians heard the word “digital library”

that, many key programmes or projects were

for the first time in a special session: “Digital
Libraries,

Technologies

andinitiated, including the most significant and costly

Organizational

project by now (about 1.2 billion RMB): theImpacts” during the 62nd IFLA General Conference

National Digital Library Project of Chinav. And thein 1996 held in Beijing. But the first project named

digital library construction has become a hot topic

after “digital library” in China is initiated in 1994,

in China.

which was consisted of three sub-projects andcooperated between IBM and Qinghua University,

Literature analysis

Fudan University and Chinese National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) respectively. The project aims

A literature search was conducted on publishedto build up stand-alone mass data processing

papers collected from CNKI and Chongqing VIP

systems for images and multimedia information

Database vi . The China National Knowledge

resources.

Infrastructure (CNKI) is a digital library which

The“National

Pilot

DigitalLibrary

comprises seven full text databases: Journals,

Project(NPDLP)”iv, which was initiated by the Ministry ofnewspapers,

Culture to State Planning Commission in 1997, wasconference proceeding, and two specializing in thethe first national level digital library project inmedical and education fields. The Chongqing VIPChina. The research partners include National

Information

Library of China and five other large public

comprehensive periodicals database.

libraries. Before the project, there were few papers

According to the statistics from CNKI，there areon digital library giving only brief introduction tomore than 1600 papers published with the keyword

projects from abroad, for example, the projects of“digital library” from 1994 to the first quarter of

Digital Library Initiative Phase one from the United

2003 in Chinese periodicals. The search returnedStates.

hits with the highest count of 689 in 2002 which

Since 1998, apart from the national library andpresents an approximatively exponential growth

public libraries led by the Ministry of Culture, there

from the beginning of 1994, as shown in table 1.

have been many research and development projects

The hits returned from VIP database which includes

related to digital library launched by many

more periodicals has a bigger number but seems touniversities under the Ministry of Educationtell the same story (see table 2).

monographs,

Servicesdissertations

Company

produces

1994-1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

1994-2003

Ti=”digital library”

19

19

54

127

318

475

127

1139

Kw=”digital library”

20

23

62

175

473

689

162

1604

2003

1995-2003

Table 1: the growth of digital library related papers
from 1994 to 2003 (from CNKI)
1995-1998

1999

2000

2001

2

2002

and

a

Ti=”digital library”

57

54

197

423

661

331

1723

Kw=”digital library”

80

80

275

646

975

499

2558

Table 2: the growth of digital library related papers

periodicals, the increasing in the number of papers

from 1994 to 2003 (from VIP database)related to digital library is extraordinary. Table 3

Comparing with the several thousand papers issued

gives a brief content analysis (by sub-category) ofevery

the digital library related papers.

year

by

Chineselibrary

professional

Subject

CNKI entries

Percentage

Digital library construction

433

27%

Digitalization or digital resources development

154

10%

Intellectual Property

111

7%

Technology R&D

109

7%

Information services

51

3%

Digital resource Sharing

48

3%

Business model or service model

40

2%

Library automation

38

2%

Digital library architecture

28

2%

User study

27

2%

Table 3: content analysis of digital library related

topics within information technology sector, which

papersare managed by the Ministry of Science andAlthough the majority of the papers are review andTechnology. There are four digital library related

discussion articles, the entries in each category

projects initiated in 863 Program after 1998.

reflect the research interests within Chinese digital

1.

library circle.

Chinese Digital Libraries
2.

Digital library projects
3.
4.

initiated by national or provincial institution. SomeordigitalChinese Digital Library Application System on
Chinaof them are research projects while majority of them
digitalization

Knowledge Network: Digital Library System
Projectviii

number of projects named with “digital library”,

resource

Research on characteristics-based multimedia
information retrieval systemvii

From the mid-nineties of last century, quite aareStrategic Research on the Development ofAdvanced

INfo.

Optic

NET

(CAINONET)ix

library

construction programs. Listed below are most

Chinese Pilot Digital Library Project (CPDLP)x

significant projects and programs in recent years.
In May 1996, the National Library of China,

Digital Library Research Projects

together with the major public libraries in the
country, including the Shanghai Library, Liaoning

Digital library projects in National 863 Program

Library, Nanjing Library, Zhongshan Library and
Shenzheng Library, submitted a proposal for

The National High Technology Research andChina’s Experimental Digital Library Project to theDevelopment Program (863 Program) was launchedState Planning and Development Committee. Thisin March 1986 with the aim of enhancing China's
international

competitivenessandproject was instituted in 1997, and designated one

improvingof the state key science and technology projects. It

China's overall capability of R&D in highwas completed in May, 2001.

technology. Digital library is one of the subject

CPDLP aims to establish an experimental digital3

library system with the collaboration, resource

sponsored or initiated by National Library of China,

sharing and unity of all participates. It operates in a

the research and compiling of metadata standard

distributed environment formed with standardized

and specification has taken a very important role.

and multi-type resources. It is the first digital library“The First Conference on Construction and Sharing

project in China and the first to give a solution toof Chinese Documents” which held in Beijing on

issues in developing digital libraries in the country.

the June 2000 pleaded for the “Chinese Metadata

The project needs further improvement to be put

Standard”

into massive use in developing digital libraries in

information resources construction. The conference

China. The solution is made up of three aspects: theurged NLC to lead the work on drafting the Chinesedigital resources construction system, the resources

Metadata Standard. The Ministry of Culture

store and management system and the services

approved the project proposed by NLC. On June

system.

2001, based on the tracking of the foreign researchtofulfill

the

needs

on

Chineseand its own experiences for a long period in thisThe Establishment of Standards and Specificationsarea, and integrated with the characteristics offor Digital Library Construction in China (ESSDLC)

Chinese document, NLC has finished the draft

project

version of “Chinese Metadata Standard”xii.
The Standard adopted an overall framework which

In September 2002, the project “Establishment offollowed the reference model presented by OAIS.

Standard and Specifications for Digital Library

As for metadata element set, it refers to the similar

Construction in China” was proposed to theprojects from the Library of Congress, the National

Ministry of Science and Technology by the National

Library of Australia, and the Cedars project, the

Science and Technology Library, National Library,

NEDLIB project and Dublin Core Metadata

China Academic Library and Information System

Initiative.. The core metadata set contains the(CALIS), Library of Beijing University, Library ofmajority of Dublin Core Metadata Set, but adds a

Chinese Academy of Science, Institute of Scientific

lot of supplementary elements for the description of

and Technological Information of China, andintellectual properties and abstract format of digital

Shanghai Library etc. This is a real joint project inresources. The draft version of March 2002 consists

which the members are come from all the leadingof 25 core elements, their qualifiers and theorganizations related to digital recourses. Most of

encoding schema with DTD and RDFs. It has been

the each partner has led one sub-project and there

considered to have the suitable coverage on

were six sub-projects started at the end of 2002.,

characteristics of Chinese Documents with adequate

three of them started at the end of 2003.

descript

The goal of the ESSDLC is to generate a series ofability,functionality,

operability

and

simplicity.

national standards and specifications regarding to
the construction of digital libraries in China. It is

Digital library construction program

also a feasibility study to realize in what degree the
The China Digital Library Program (CDLP)

necessity is, for each of these standards andspecifications in the sub-projects. The ongoingproject has already issued 35 reports in its websitexi

As a major successive achievement of the CPDLP,

and some of them were published in professional

in July 1998, the National Library of China brought

journals.

forward its Chinese Digital Library Program (CDLP)
proposal and it was approved by China Government.

Chinese Metadata Standard project

Much like National Digital Library Project in the
United States, the main goal of the CDLP is focus

In most of the digital library related projects whichon composing a digital library of reproductions of4

primarysourcematerials

toensurebetterfocus on technology, standards and application

preservation and study of Chinese culture heritage.

development, NCRSP pays fully attention to content

Begun in 2000, the project proposed a five years

creation,plan to digitize a huge amount of its collections,accessibility

including books, images and video audio collections.

resources that CDLP carried out.

With technical achievements by CPDLP, CDLP set

This project is a major effort conducted by

up a national-wide platform to enhance the access togovernment to improve the unfavorable information

digital repositories yielded by this project. Lead

resource sharing situation in the country. By the end

directly by the Ministry of Culture, CDLP takes theof 2005, NCRSP intends to establish a network withadvantages of been a national level project. A

three tiers which have a national level center, more

consortium which has 117 members was establishedthan 30 provincial information center and more thanby the end of 2002, under a practical rule of “unique5000 information centers scattered in counties,

planning, standards ruled, team work and resource

towns and communities. With the network, NCRSP

sharing”.

can ensure the connection and availability with theAccording to these objectives, the major tasks of themasses. A union catalog with the culture content inprogram involve the creation of digital repositories,

libraries, museums, art galleries and art institutes

the construction of digital library software/hardware

over the country being plan to made at first, thisinfrastructure, the development of application

will take advantages with the union content creation,systems, the shaping of standards and specifications

handle system and resource discovery. By the end

structure, and training of professionals.

of 2005, NCRSP plan to finish a digitalization of

network
based

construction
on

the

and

services

technologies

andone million books, one thousand local operas, one
National Library of China Phase II & National

thousand music production, one thousand art works

Digital Library of China Projectand one thousand antique items. The digital copiesof Chinese culture heritage will be accessible to as

Approved by the State Development and Reform

much as people in China as soon as the project

Commission of China, National Library of China

accomplished.

plans to implement the National Library of China
Phase II and National Digital Library of China

National Technological Library and Information

Project. Actually this project is a part of successive

Centrexiii

achievement of CDLP, including a bibliothecacontaining 12 million books with nearly 78

Led by the state Scientific and Technologicalthousand square meters, reading rooms with 2000

Ministry and approved by the State Council, theseats, a National Digital Library and its accessory

National Technological Library and Information

facilities, at a total budget of RMB 1.2 billion.

Centre, was established in June 2000. Aims at
meeting the needs of technological information by

National

CultureResources

Sharing

Projectbuilding(NCRSP)ainformation

visualcentreincludingoftechnologicalscience,engineering,

agriculture and medicine, the center is actually a
Also lead by Ministry of Culture in China, National

digital library of scientific and technological

Culture Resources Sharing Project (NCRSP) has

resources. The participating institutes are the Chinalots of ties with CDLP. The principal objective of

Academy of Science Library, the China Scientific

NCRSP is to collect and digitalize various type ofand Technological Information Research Institute,large amount culture content through out the

the Mechanical Industry Information Researchcountry, make them available for domestic masses

Institute, the Metallurgical Industry Information andby nation-wide network. Unlike the CDLP, which

Standard Research Institute, the China Chemical
5Industry Information Center, the China Academy of

document delivery service system, CSDL cover its

Agriculture Library and the China Academy ofservice across the whole Chinese Academia acrossMedicine Library. There are totally 7 libraries andthe country. CSDL can also provide more thanInstitutes.

ten-thousand kinds of full text of foreign scientific

The Goal of Development is to create a nationalmagazine and other collections, disciplinary portal

scientific and technological resource collection andof special scientific domain and virtual reference

service consortium. The general principle on which

services.

the consortium is based is that each institute willprocess data and provide services separately, but

China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)

will cooperate in establishing a central database forBasexiv

the uniform information retrieval. The center will
Launched in June 2000, the China National

provide users with secondary document retrieval

Knowledge Infrastructure consists of over 70

services and primary document delivery services

special databases, covering theoretical research,through Internet. Any Internet users can have freepolicy research, laws and regulations, work

access to the secondary document retrieval service

discussions, current news and affairs and otherprovided by the center. Registered users can also

related information.

request the center to deliver primary documents in

The CNKI is based on the China Periodicalvarious ways, such as by email, fax and the postal

Network Full Text Database and the China Major

service.

Newspaper Full Text Database created by the
Qinghua University. But there will be some Chinese

Chinese National Science Digital Library (CSDL)

and foreign databases such as “China Laws andAs a part of the Knowledge Innovation Project ofRegulations Database”, “China Trade Standards

Chinese Academia, CSDL has been started at Dec.

Database”, “Chinese Yearbooks Database” etc2001. Primary goal of CSDL is to provide better

integrated to the services. The CNKI knowledge

support to scientific research and knowledge service

base provides online subscription services with awith digital library framework and technology.

central web site and 80 mirror sites countrywide.

Main tasks of CDSL is to build integrity
information resources and management system all

China Academic Library & Information Systemover the Chinese Academia, promote and speed(CALIS) Projectvalue-added information exchange and knowledge
Led by the state Educational Ministry, the China

delivery service under the network circumstance,

Academic Library & Information System (CALIS)and make the digital library to be an extension to

was approved by the state Project and Development

every scientist’s desktop in China.

Committee and launched on November 1998.

CSDL not only purchases lots of important

The CALIS project was a library-networking

commercial electronic resources, but builds up its

project at the beginning, aiming at web information

own Chinese scientific literature databases with aresource sharing via CERNET (China Education

amount of more than one million records, which

and Research NETwork) for faculties of colleges

covers major topics like chemistry, biology, physics,
mechanics,

optics,mathematics,

and universities across the country. With theastronomy,geography, computer science as well.

web-based technology of distribution, academic

Furtherlibraries should make full use of their superiority in

more, the access to the content in the CSDL does

digital resources and speed up the development of

not limited to just searching its bibliographic

their databases. The CALIS project makes use of

database and electronic resources. With themuch in methods that foreign libraries take,capabilities of newly built inter-library loan and6integrates new achievements of technology progress

promote digital library construction. But there are

and features for its online cooperative cataloging,still some big issues to be dealt with:the databases originated locally, the customized

Intellectual Property: China has established amodern intellectual property system in just two
decades; as a result, awareness of intellectual
property rights remains underdeveloped in society
at large. In most cases, libraries are not the owner of
their collections. So far materials in public domain
are always the first choice to digital library projects.
But the term “public domain” remains unclear inpractice. There always have been a large number ofthings to do before the start of digitization andproviding “fair use” services to digital library users.
Digital copyright will always be a heavy burden for
digital library practitioners till the reasonable
intellectual property framework for digital assets
perfectly settled down. The intellectual property
framework is challenged by the coming digitalsociety. Digital library technology has to provide a
flexible and extensible IP management framework
in applications.

OPAC system and the interlibrary loan system.

Discussion and Conclusion
With

the

boomingofknowledge

economy,information resources are being mined and widelyused. As the “thesauruses of knowledge”, libraries
will follow the trend of social and economic
development to realize the digitization of literature
resources and networking of service means, with thepush and support from modern information
technology. But in China, the concept of “digital
library” arises with the growing of the internet
bubbles. Researchers and practitioners of digital
library have promised too much to decision makers
and stakeholders, so that they can get the financial
support or approval for their projects from thecentral or provincial government. When it is still a
R&D area in the United States, the large scale

Cost for digitization: With a history of 5000 years,
ancient collections in Chinese libraries are theembodiment of the wisdom of the past. This cultural
heritage is an important part of human legacy andcan contribute immensely to the digital mainstreamof present world. This is also considered to be thebest way to preserve the culture heritage. But
libraries themselves are not publishing houses. The
high cost of digitization is not affordable just by
libraries. Chinese government has made a great
effort to establish and support the national
information infrastructure. The multi investment
mechanism should take into account within thenational policy for digital library development.

national level implementation project is about toembark in China. It’s a little bit dangerous to build
digital library buildings in such a fast changing
basis of Information technology.
For most of the libraries in China, the first challenge
and motivation of digital library construction isfrom the electronic resources flooding into libraries
without control. One third of budget used for digitalcollection development in a few research andacademic libraries in China. Traditionally, catalogue
is the image of library collections and the main
entrance for readers to access. But more and more“virtual” digital collections provided by publishers

Cutting-edge Information Technology: There issuch an opinion in China that no necessary to worry
about technology. You can get any technology for
digital library when you get money. But that is nottrue. Digital library consists of all kinds of
cutting-edge information technology without special
favors. It seems we should be the master oftechnologies but technologies lead to our modern
life, no exception for the future of digital library too.
China has a lot of technology achievements in

or information brokers can hardly integrated into
library OPAC system. Libraries have to deal withthree kinds of digital resources: digitized traditional
collections,materials,

leasedanddatabases

free-accessorborn-digitalmaterials.

Library

collections have no longer bounded within librarywalls. There is no sole portal for a library providing
to its readers in the digital age.
Chinese government has made a great effort to7

multimedia

retrieval,

full

text

procession,Modern Technology of Library and Information

distributed computing, etc., but as a whole, China is

Science 2002.2

lack of systematic research and development on[3]. Xia Xu, Zhang Chunhui etc. “The Presence

digital library technologies.

and Development of Chinese Metadata Research”

Standards and Specifications: As a digital
resource and service providing system on theinternet, the digital library has to establish andfollow a set of standards and specifications about
digitization processing, resource description andorganization, system interoperating and services. It
should adopt all kinds of existing related standards
and specifications of content encoding, data
communication, intellectual property protection,system security, management, service and operation,
so as to assure the usability, interoperability andsustainability of the resources and services of digital
library. But there will be a long way to go toconclude a necessary technology standards andspecifications system to smooth the construction ofdigital library in China.

Proceedings of International Conference on Chinese
Metadata Application. 2001. Shanghai[4]. Arms, W.Y.”Digital Libraries”, MIT Press
2000[5]. Liu Wei, etc. ” Introduction to Digital Library”.
Shanghai Science and Technology Document Press
2000. 12[6]. Zhu Qiang “Pre-Requirements of the Digital
Library” Journal of Academic Libraries (Beijing)
2000 no.1[7]. Sun Chengjian Liu Gang “The Outset andDevelopment of the Digital Libraries in China” theWhite paper of Digital Library/Computer World
1999. 6[8]. Wang Bing “Digital library: definitions,
Impacts and Related problems”

Bulletin of

China Society of Library Science (The Journal of
the Library Science in China) 1998 no.6

References[9]. Zhang Xiaolin etc. the Trends on Digital
Library Standardization, the Journal of Chinese[1]. Xia Cuijuan “Reviews of the Researches on
DigitalLibraryof

China

Librarianship 2002.6

2001-2002”

http://www.library.sh.cn/libnet/sztsg/fulltext/reports/2003/DLoverview2002.htm (viewed 1/4/2003)[2]. Wang Qiyun “The Investigation and Analysis
on Thesis of Digital Library in Recent 6 years” The
viii

See
http://www.nlc.gov.cn/dloff/scientific6/sci_5.htm(2003/12/25)
ix
See
http://www.nlc.gov.cn/dloff/scientific6/sci_6.htm(2003/12/25)
x
The alias is China’s Experimental Digital Library
Project , see
http://www.nlc.gov.cn/dloff/scientific6/sci_7.htm(2003/12/25)
xi
See: http://cdls.nstl.gov.cn/cdls2/w3c/
xii
Can be downloaded from:http://www.cdi.cn/download/dmds.pdf
xiii
http://www.nstl.gov.cn
xiv
http://www.cnki.net/

i

According to the World Bank Report, see
http://www.worldbank.org.cn/
ii
See http://www.cnnic.net.cn/tj/rep2002.shtml
iii
So far there have been several digital library
research institutes established by Beijing
University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai
Jiaotong University, Shanghai Library andShanghai Changjiang Computer Group.
iv
See:
http://www.library.sh.cn/libnet/sztsg/fulltext/reports/1998/metadata.html
v
See: http://www.nlc.gov.cn/dloff/vi
Based on the data collected from CNKI
(http://www.cnki.net ) and Chongqing VIP Database(http://202.119.47.6/), viewed in 2003.12
vii
See
http://www.nlc.gov.cn/dloff/scientific6/sci_2.htm(2003/12/25)
8